Aspire Global Cuts Lottery Pact with Russia
Aspire Global, an online gambling B2B provider for iGaming solutions, has formed a Russian lottery alliance just as that country seems poised to saddle its gambling operators with tough tax hikes.
The Stockholm-listed Aspire Global reported on Thursday that it has signed an agreement to provide Russian National Lottery operator Sports Lotteries LLC with online and land-based lottery games. The contract includes Aspire's BetoBET internet sports betting network, which will include both gaming content and its Player Account Management service product.
Project Manager for Sports Lotteries LLC, Ratmir Ronami, said:
“We are proud to embark on this multiyear strategic partnership with Aspire Global’s BtoBet that will see us go from strength to strength by using the valuable insights and best practises that Aspire Global and BtoBet are renowned to employ. I am positive that this partnership will result in the fruition of entertaining games that will be highly popular with the Russian players as well as it will take the Russian lottery industry to a whole new level.”
Aspire will supply 10 instant lotery products for retail operations to Sports Lotteries, plus five draw-based products for both online and offline. The contract is for an initial three year term with provisions for an indefinite length extension.
The Moscow-based Sports Lotteries – a collaboration between Russian betting giant Liga Stavok and the Boxing Federation of Russia – is one of only two firms allowed in Russia to sell online lottery items, while the other is Stoloto. Sportslottery.ru opened in June following receipt in August 2019 of its Russian warrant.
Aspire Global CEO Tsachi Maimon said:
“Aspire Global and BtoBet are proud to have been chosen as the technological partner by Sports Lotteries LLC for the provision of multi-channel lottery games. We are committed and determined to support Sports Lotteries in becoming not only a leader in its field but also a point of reference for the Russian lottery industry. The lottery vertical is highly popular in Russia resulting in sales which were around €1 billion in 2019. We are confident that together with Sports Lotteries we will contribute in a significant way to the industry’s exponential growth.”
Boxers v.s. Bookmakers
Lotteries may be primed for expansion, but Russia's sports betting industry is currently in chaos over recent plans to dramatically raise taxes and abolish the two competing bookmakers industry groups (SROs) along with their respective digital payment centers in favour of a single payment system regulated by a 'unified gambling regulator.'
The proposal to introduce steeper taxes is expected to help Russian sports associations, who are already taking a share on all wagers that have been taken on their matches. However the current tax scheme applies to major athletic activities, where the revenue is expected to go to the Ministry of Finance, of which a part can or may not flow down into local sports.
Darina Denisova, president of the Bookmakers Self-Regulatory Organization, recalled this week that calls for the abolition of SROs were first expressed by the Boxing Federation in June – the same people behind Sports Lotteries – and "harshly criticized by the entire betting community".
Regardless of whether the Federation feels it is shortchanged by the new betting tax system, a battle between bookmakers and boxing luminaires definitely seems to be brewing. But since the latter seem to have the ear of key players in government, there is really only one guess as to who will take this round.
